“We Rap About What We See, Meaning Reality”: The Prophetic Voice of Hip-Hop

“A theologian of the cross says what a thing is. In modern parlance: a theologian of the cross calls a spade a spade. One who ‘looks on all things through suffering and the cross’ is constrained to speak the truth…it will see precisely that the cross and the resurrection itself is the only answer to that problem, not erasure or neglect.” – Gerhard O. Forde

I admit: I am frontin’ when I talk hip-hop. I was raised on 90s country and Neil Diamond. I didn’t hear my first sample until high school when a friend of mine popped N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton into his Jeep stereo. And I hated it. I was not raised with parents who cloistered us from any, seemingly, “negative culture,” but I was still pretty sheltered just by geographic cultural isolation. I’m not sure what made me hate it at the time, but I didn’t go out and buy the album right after I heard it. Matter of fact, I didn’t listen to hip-hop again until the spring of 2011—after grad school—when I met a self-proclaimed music snob at my church whose specialty was hip-hop. He grew up with it, lives it and breathes it. We got to talking and he convinced me to drop what I was listening to and listen exclusively to hip-hop for a year.

It took most of the first three months of 2011 for me to start really liking hip-hop. More specifically, it was De La Soul’s third album, Buhloone Mindstate, which dealt the deathblow to any remaining hesitations and prejudices I had against hip-hop as music. The presence and rhythmic flows of Posdnous (Plug One) and Trugoy (Plug Two) and the samples and beats of Maseo were a softening strike to my hardened heart. The album is playful, it is socially observant and it seemed to match every clever word and turn-of-phrase in a perfect beat. And then there was “I Be Blowin’,” an instrumental track featuring a sample from Lou Rawls’ “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” and the saxophone work of Maceo Parker of Parliament-Funkadelic fame. “I Be Blowin’” may be one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard. In the end, hip-hop entered into my life with a fury and, with that entrance, my interest in thinking about hip-hop and how it intersects the Christian story.

The easiest connection to make between Christianity and hip-hop is its prophetic voice. The prophets in the Old Testament were sent by God to speak to his people and tell them how it was, show them with vivid language the reality of their plight. It was always descriptive long before it was prescriptive. Prophecy was not some futuristic sightseeing, but truth telling so that they may see the future. Ralph Basui Watkins has been a central figure in the discussion of hip-hop and Christianity for years and he expands on the nature of that voice:

“Like Jeremiah, hip-hop is crying out as it critiques and engages the plight of those it speaks for and to. Hip-hop is looking at the political centers and religious leaders, critiquing them while crying out for help. The question is, will the leaders hear hip-hop? Will they listen to the cry? Will they come alongside hip-hop and help, or will they condemn the screaming voice from within?” – Hip-Hop Redemption, pg. 49

If you remember, the prophets, too, turned toward the political and religious leaders of their day and described the very sins that infected the cities and altars. The prophets spoke with the very word of God passing through their teeth to accuse and condemn. I can only imagine the harshness of the language that they used to fill their listener’s ears with descriptive force. Hip-hop employs the same format as emcees see and report the way things are and shout out about the way things ought to be. They speak to the beat in hopes that the political machine and church will see the reality of what is going on in the culture, especially in the inner cities. Making a call for them to turn and repent of their part in the fracturing of those very communities and work towards restoration.

Unfortunately, much like the prophets of the Old Testament, the laments of hip-hop often fall on deaf ears and hardened hearts. Collective society depreciates the overall value of hip-hop and the list of reasons are legion. One doesn’t have to go far through the history to see the rougher edges of the genre. It is quite understandable to see the where the critiques come from. There’s the misogyny and machismo; the one that specifically stands out to me is in Ice Cube’s “You Can’t Fade Me” on AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, when he laments not kicking a girl in her belly for trying to “fade him”—convincing him that her unborn child is his. There are several episodes, especially in gangster rap, where their actions should, rightfully, be condemned, but the presence of those elements, no matter how harsh they might be may in fact speak descriptive truth about the nature and plight of inner-city life.

Violence is another critique lodged at hip-hop as a whole, even though it wasn’t until gangster rap that violence reached fever pitch with emcees. However, much of this criticism is often lodged only at the emcees who talk about shooting cops, or each other, while turning a blind, uncritical eye away from the violence done in the inner cities by, largely, white cops. However, the critique stands. Hip-hop can often be violent and pushes for vengeance more often than grace and reconciliation, but, realistically speaking, it can also relay the violence that is part of the makeup of those communities, especially if events like the L.A. riots are taken into account—which itself led to the height of gangster rap.

The same critiques and complaints continue, but the ultimate irony of the whole situation is that hip-hop, with its inconsistencies, blatancy and rough edges, is an earnest reflection of human life. We are inconsistent, we are violent and sexist, among an insurmountable list of inner-oppressors. However, humanity also has severe moments of clear and cogent truth-telling—at the behest of the Spirit. At best we are a mixed bag of motivations and actions that surrender often to our basest desires. If we had the full biographies of the OT prophets, I would imagine there would be much to condemn in their behavior, for they were human as well. Would we then stop listening to what they were saying? Probably. That’s what we’ve always done.

Hip-hop, I have learned in my growing love for it, is a cry in the wilderness of real suffering and despair. Things are not right with the world today. There is much to observe and describe honestly. Because if we are not honest about the reality of the situation, how do we ever expect to understand the nature of Christ’s work in the lives of people, communities and nations? No, hip-hop is not perfect, nor is it outright “redemptive,” but it speaks truth to a society that has, historically, ignored the laments of sufferers. It is often a clarion call to honesty: to name a spade a spade and recognize the truth for what it is. As is the case throughout Scripture, this is the only starting point. God has always been a proponent of saying the truth through a broken medium. Hip-hop is just another example of how God uses crooked sticks to make straight lines. And that’s why I love it.

Awesome. Listening to it right now. You should check out the website my buddy and I are starting in order to listen to every hip/hop album released from 1989-1994 in real time from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2019 to celebrate their 25th anniversaries. http://www.sonofbyford.com has already had a soft launch, but the hard launch will be on January 1.

I have never been one to push people to partake in culture that doesn’t appeal to them. I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing that hip/hop doesn’t appeal to you. Not everyone can interact with every type of culture, let alone every example of every type of culture.

However, your question is an interesting one, because I don’t think most people would have liked the packaging that the OT prophets had. The Israelites sure didn’t anyways!

I don’t think it is something to be concerned with because at the end of the day, God will get the message to you whether you listen to hip/hop or get it from the Word or some other medium. For me, paintings and art are a weak area of culture for me. I can’t stay focused and interested in an art gallery for longer than an hour. Part of it is that I sometimes just don’t get it. Am I missing out on something God might be expressing through that medium? Probably so.

But, here’s the thing, I also don’t go around critiquing and bashing painting and art as not valuable or not a worthy form of culture. I don’t feel like it is my place to because I barely understand it in the first place. A lot of critique over the years against hip/hop has been, largely, by people who have not spent time with it, yet think they know enough about it to depreciate it and make value judgments against it.

In the end, my defense against hip/hop is not against people who just don’t enjoy the music style or packaging, but against those who ignore it and depreciate it just because they think it is “bad” for people to partake in. However, they make such judgments without actually listening to the music and spending time with it to see if those judgments are actually valid, wholesale.

Thanks for this piece I am a 50plus pastor that happens to love hip hop . I think it is an artistic fruit of postmodernism in terms of its form and therefore I am not bothered by the sampling from other recorded music . Like all genres of music there is good and bad provocative and superficial . What I find most intriguing is that this “word” driven artistic expression has gained such traction among a generation that we have been told are visually driven . Churches have tried to spice things up with video presentations , dances and other visual attention getters because they are convinced that people are bored by mere words and are not able to connect the dots in propositional presentations , but hip hop is all about word play which requires abstract reasoning in order to get it .

Excellent point, Ken. I agree completely and have asked those same questions about why hip/hop is so popular in a supposedly visually-driven generation. I am not quite sure myself, however I have wondered whether it has to do with the fullness of the hip/hop culture including graffiti, b-boys & b-girls, breakdancing, clothing, etc. Some of those things are very visually-oriented and very closely connected to hip/hop music.

I could write a whole other post on Christian hip/hop because I think it has become one of the few genres of the Christian music culture that has excelled in form (technique, sampling, DJing, etc.) and in message–I would argue because they understand the history of the hip/hop genre, where it’s been and where’s they think it’s heading. Propaganda and Sho Baraka are even taking heat from corners of the church for songs they released that question the nature of race relations inside and outside the church. Check out Propaganda’s “Precious Puritans” and Sho Baraka’s “Chapter 9: Jim Crow.” Both artists are highly recommended hip/hop, let alone Holy Hip/Hop.

I think the appeal is because as image bearers of the God who speaks we are distracted by the visual because we are fallen – as bob Dylan said ” all he believes is his eyes and his eyes just tell him lies “- but ultimately we are verbivores word creatures whether those words are true or not – btw propaganda is kinfolk

Part of the appeal of hip/hop for me, too, is how such a word-oriented art is matched with a rhythm and a beat. It is not just reading words or even reading poetry (though I am sure that poetry is written with a rhythm in mind), but words, spoken (not sung, most of the time), in time, in rhythm and with variations of tones and breaths that sometimes give a simple phrase, completely new meaning by the performance by the rapper.

There is something more going on there than just words, but the words are still front and center and have clear content and meaning that is hard not to get. Sometimes I feel like what is said becomes more powerful in the performance of hip/hop than it would have been in a normal song with music and vocals.

Anyways, great insight once again Ken! Love the Bob Dylan quote as well.

Sampling is what used to get me bent out of shape about hip hop- but refusing to engage the form hardened my prejudgment that samples were indicative of zero talent.

Lecrae and Propaganda were my gateway drugs into finally digging hip hop but it was DFW who renewed my thinking about the sampling issue. Hip hop flows along this intertextual arabesque, both in its lyrics (allusions & wordplay) but the use of samples in particular is as intertextual as it gets. Anthony Thiselton is the final link in chain for me for the way he outlines how biblical authors use the OT- and not just in the NT, either. Daniel in ch. 9 tells us he’s been meditating on Jeremiah’s prophecy (which upon investigation turns out to be ch. 25) but Jeremiah, in turn, is drawing on Leviticus 26. Balaam’s prophecies in Numbers inform Hosea 11 (more than likely) and it goes on and on. I’ve come to appreciate the analogue within hip hop which takes something identifiable and sets it in a new context, importing its original significance but remodulating that significance with its placement in a new musical sequence.

The attention you draw to De La Soul is a great case in point of this split reference being used to affectively accomplish something meaningful. New settings for familiar words & sounds yields new meaning while remaining grounded in the tradition. Sound familiar?

I love the concept you brought up about prophets meditating on those who went before and then using it within a new context and for a new generation. Where did you find the DFW bit about sampling? Would love to read it!

The thing that always gets me about the sampling issue is one that philosophers have dealt with since time began: what is required of a person using something already made to make it uniquely their own (i.e. what makes something our property?). I remember some thinkers saying that something become property once a person puts a certain level of work into it, for instance when working land. There were other views too. But go back to the idea of the Creator bringing all into existence from nothing and giving it to his creatures to cultivate and make culture from. We all use material and ideas already created and thought by God and we make them personal and new and contextual (a la Gospel!), in a sense we make it our own.

I get that some of the earlier hip/hop music probably was negligent in giving proper acknowledgment to their sources and inspiration–much like we are with God. But I think an acknowledgment of where the sample came from should be enough. I would even go far as to say that it should be free for their use as long as it is denoted in the album liner notes somewhere. Hip/hop heads always dig into where the samples come from and end up buying the music of those musicians sampled. I know I do and I know my fellow friends who are fans do too. Anyways, I could rant on the sampling issue. Not for here though! Just wanted to address some of the things you talked about here.

D.T. Max’s biography commented on Wallace’s fascination with hip hop as an analogue to the literary tradition he was struggling with/within in his post-“Girl With Curious Hair” phase. In “Signifying Rappers”, which (let the reader understand) I do not claim to have fully read yet [1], Wallace & Costello offer some coverage of the phenomenon of sampling and discuss “pavlovs” [2]:

“These ‘nodes of associations’ we call ‘pavlovs’ — a unit of measure of everything we feel or think while hearing music we’ve heard before… Aesthetically, pavlovling shouldn’t happen, but in experience it does.

Pavlovs are everything we come to associate with music—and can re-experience in listening again — that isn’t ‘in’ the music. They’re what we bring to bear, when rightly cued. Pavlovs are the saliva that flows when the bells ring.”

This new horizon connected immediately with Thiselton’s research on biblical hermeneutics and has helped me to listen perhaps a little bit better to how Scripture itself wields Scripture & better understand the development of God’s revelation & how it culminates in the Word made flesh, Jesus, who recasts all the old themes & types with his imprint.

[1] My reading of the DFW ouevre is moving in this weird kind of Fermat spiral, so, should the Lord tarry, one day I’ll finish it off… Hopefully (gulp!).

[2] Which I didn’t even know was a semi-technical term until I read that footnote! Reading hyper-self-conscious white guys discourse on hip hop has so many side benefits!

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